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Smiling Jack
=Smiling Jack= The Blood Red Sandman, Demon of the Third Circle, Twenty-Second Soul of Cecelyne Once there was An-Po-Hoa. An-Po-Hoa was a pariah god; An-Po-Hoa was the God of Demonic Incursions. His job in the Celestial Bureaucracy was important, but loathed; he was tasked with catalouging, recording, and knowing everything there is to know about demonic incursions. It was his place to know how all the Demons could be summoned into Creation, how to prevent them from getting in without being in the thrall of the Exalted. Needless to say, he had few friends, and fewer after the Usurpation. His far-seeing eyes could easily see what the Sidereals were blind to; that without the Solar and Lunar Exalted actively involved in Creation, instead either locked away or fled, the Terrestrials would fall, and lack the power to keep powerful Demons at bay. His arguments mostly fell on deaf ears, but, showing a drive few spirits can show, a drive to learn and evolve, An-Po-Hoa began to advance in the arts of debate. This threatened the Bronze Faction, for fear that if his arguments started to gain traction, they might begin to sway some of those members of the Bronze Faction who were only acting because they were convinced that the Solars were the biggest threat to Creation; if it was proven that their absence would create a larger threat (unlikely as it might be,) then those members might swayed away. An-Po-Hoa was silenced. A massive smear campaign as launched, which easily obliterated what little reputation the pariah God had. His arguments fell on deaf ears, he was ignored. His cautions unheeded, the Usurpation occured, and the determined God watched what he believed to be Creation's future burn in the fires of Sidereal Hubris. Powerless to stop any of it, there was only one thing he could do: become a demon hunter. Applying the same determination that allowed him to begin to learn to be a diplomat, An-Po-Hoa became a warrior; he attuned himself to an Oricalcum demon-slaying blade, and resolved that if nobody else would do anything about the problem, he would. For a time, he did. At the height of his career, he led a team of young Gods of battle and a few Terrestrials in exterminating demons. Then came the Great Contagion. Creation suffered, and the heroic Gods and Terrestrials felt called to battle, though the Fae and the Dead were not the foes they had trained to battle against. They, too, suffered, loss after loss, and though they crushed the Fae and eviscerated the Dead when they took to the field, their losses were staggering, and they were pushed further back. The Contagion pushed on, and Calibration came. It was An-Po-Hoa who realized, too late, that the massive number of casulties Creation had suffered would prove fertile grounds for a Demon crossing - a large demon. He fled back to his office in Yu-Shan, pulled ancient scrolls long-laid with dust from the shelves, and found what he was looking for - it had tweaked the back of his mind, and there he found it. :Yashim, Demon of the Third Circle, Twenty-Second Soul of Cecelyne, He Who Collects The Dust, could cross into Creation during Calibrations where large plauges and death spread across Creation. Worse; he was utterly indefeatable in Creation for the duration of his stay; although a weak combatant, he could not be slain or banished, regenerating his damage rapidly, even that which was Aggravated. The last time had crossed during a time of plauge, his depredations had been halted by a Dawn-Caste Hero, who had battled him for the entire duration of the Five Days' Darkness. An-Po-Hoa looked up from his scroll with a sense of dread. His team could not sustain a battle for five days and nights. No force remaining in Creation, short of an entire Legion of Terrestrials, could, and they were too busy battling the Fae and the Dead. And they were losing. The havok one unleashed Demon of the Third Circle could wreak during Calibration would be devastating - if he ignored the Fae and Demons, he could cut a swathe through the weakened forces of Creation. Then it hit him; Yashim was only invincible in Creation. It was beyond risky; but the Demon-Hunting God saw no other option. He and his remaining fellows confronted Yashim on the sands of Ceceleyne, the eternal desert. The other Gods were the first to fall, and one by one, so did his three Terrestrial allies; only Yashim and An-Po-Hoa were left. The fight was close to even, however; An-Po-Hoa's allies had not gone down without exacting a toll on Yashim, and by the Great Contagion, An-Po-Hoa was by then a Greater God of Battle in his own right. The battle was fierce and determined, but in the end, An-Po-Hoa emerged victorious by a narrow margin, Yashim's sand spilling into his mother desert. However, unbeknownst to him, he had fulfilled the condition required to slay Yashim permanently; by murdering him atop his mother. The resultant power vaccum found the weakened God, already far-corrupted from his original purpose, weakened by exposure to the Great Contagion, and utterly drained of Willpower and Essence. The God was torn apart, as was the crumbling remains of Yashim - to a lesser extent, the natures of An-Po-Hoa's allies were incorporated into the nascent being, and the maddened, vicious creature that emerged was Smiling Jack. The Blood-Red Sandman battles against it's own nature, but such struggles are futile. He stands a full six feet, six inches tall. A huge mummy, with pearls of fire in place of eyes, wearing a large white mask with a bright, red smile upon it's face. His shrouds constantly drip blood, and bloodsoaked sand emerges from him in puffs when he moves swiftly or is struck. Smiling Jack wears a tattered leather apron, and the Oricalcum Demon-Slaying Sword he wielded as An-Po-Hoa has fused with his left arm, becoming a huge bone saw. The maddened, violent subsoul of Ceceleyne now lives only to spread terror and blood. He lurks on the sands of the desert, unable to enter Malfeas for all demons rejecting him due to his having been borne from a living God, uniquely able to travel Ceceleyne in a span of hours, instead of seven days, as is typical. Category:Exalted